A Reason To
by Rose7
Summary: I want you to make the right choice. I want to give you a reason to. SW:KotOR one-shot


Written within the same galaxy as my other stories, but doesn't predict anything for _Lost and Found_.

* * *

This man was cold. He was cold and lifeless and Katrina thought to herself how he was nothing like Carth. Carth's breathing made his chest rise up and down. Wind would make Carth's graying hair flutter, make strands of it fall over his wrinkled brow and his brown eyes.

_"Grenn," she had murmured softly to the TSF lieutenant. She didn't want to scare him- he had already looked frightened enough at having to be the one to tell her, the Admiral's mysterious Jedi wife rumored to be a Dark Lord._

_She had been calm by that point. Grenn didn't need to see into the room behind her; Grenn didn't need to see the smashed items and torn curtains and oddly singed sheets of the bed, victims of Force lightning and Force-propelled fingers._

This man's eyes weren't open, and they would never open again. This man's hair was slick and greasy and looked as stiff as the rest of his body; pinned to his scalp like rust-tipped steel. This man's beard was unkempt and dotted with white, and it clung heavily to sagging cheeks; dead flesh already feeling the weight of gravity. Carth's beard was more like trimmed stubble, focused around his grin and his smirk and his smile.

_"Grenn, I need you to take this-"she had handed him her weapon. "-and get it to Jedi Master Bastila Shan. Contact her through the Jedi Temple on Coruscant. Tell her to keep it away from me. Tell her that she isn't to give it back even if I ask for it…not until she's sure."_

_She hadn't needed Grenn to tell her. She had known before it hit the HoloNet, before _This Just In with Tova Vin _had flashed on the morning newsvids with an unattractive red-head filling in for the show's normal host. She had known before the Republic had gotten final statistics and made their official statement._

Across this man's chest, slicing his muscle and solid frame were long pink vibroblade wounds, blistering red blaster sores, and one gaping mass of dried blood and tissue somewhere around his abdomen. Carth's scars had never altered him so much. His were thin and brown, tracing over his limbs and his heart, but the most they had made him do was swear revenge on a Sith Admiral. They had not taken away his smile or his nicknames as completely as the man before her had been stripped of his.

_The only person who had known before she did had screamed out across space from where he was on Coruscant; a now-orphaned Padawan trying to reach his Master._

_Grenn had watched her carefully for a moment, obviously trying to figure out the implications of her request. He had held her lightsaber between thumb and forefinger as if it was toxic. But, like the loyal subordinate he had always been, he had nodded, saluted, and left to carry out her instructions._

This man couldn't be Carth because she loved Carth. And this man was dead.

It was this thought that saved her, kept her from letting herself methodically hunt down and exterminate every member of his executioner's race. It was denial, ironically enough, that kept Revan from doing what Katrina Onasi longed to do right now.

The blaze of his father's body smoldering in flames glowed maroon in the whites of Dustil Onasi's eyes. He stood on the opposite side, flanked by the pregnant Tova Vin-Onasi. She wore white, her blonde curls wavering slightly in the smoke, her hands folded demurely in front of her and her keen grey eyes taking in everyone and their reactions.

Katrina wondered if the child inside Dustil's wife would be a son; if Dustil would finally understand that the desire to protect said son went beyond everything else, what it was to have to leave him and risk his hate because he loved him too much to risk something happening to him.

Dustil just stared blankly, and she saw the fires of Telos behind his reddened cheeks and the rims of his eyes; the death of his mother playing out over and over in her former Padawan's head. Around him stood several Republic officers, dozens of Telosian comrades.

On the other side of the fire, Katrina was not alone. Around her stood the other half of Carth Onasi's life. She didn't mind the separation and knew it was unconscious, but she also knew that Carth wouldn't have liked it. He didn't place them into categories; he loved both halves equally, no matter how much it might have pained him at times.

Celyn Onasi was fifteen. She stood between Katrina and Visas Marr; the Miraluka's head bowed in silent concentration. Katrina wondered what it looked like to a creature with Force-sight; if Carth glowed red with the embers of the fire or if he shone with the last remnants of his life, blue and gold and every noble color she could imagine.

Their daughter, small for her age, short like her, was quiet but soaking wet with tears. He used to say Celyn looked like her, but right now all she could see was Carth- in the lines of their daughter's nose, in the shape of her brown eyes; crinkled and narrowed in sorrow.

Mission shivered and shook with the weight of her tears. The Twi'lek was older and her light blue lekku hung long and adorned behind her; but Katrina remembered only the fourteen-year-old who had sparred with Carth in the sewers and apologized ten minutes later. Zaalbar, decorated in the chiefly ornaments of the Wookiees, stood next to his oldest friend. Around his neck and scattered randomly through his thick russet fur were patches of grey and white.

She could feel Jolee even though his body had been long turned to ash in the funerary fires of the Jedi. She remembered how the old man had sat through his own eulogies, commentating and snorting at parts he found particularly contrived. Juhani was somewhere around Dustil. Her spectral form didn't look at all altered; Katrina almost thought she could hear the soft tinkling of the beads in the Cathar's hair.

She almost smiled at the sight of the Mandalorian helmet sitting off to the side; noticed by none other than herself and the one who had laid it quietly in the darkness. Bastila had said nothing, but Katrina nodded towards the helmet in silent thanks for Canderous's show of respect for Carth.

Bastila stood on her other side. Her Padawan, a teenager a little bigger than Celyn, emulated his Master's posture and facial expression, though he could do little to emulate the crow's feet that crept out from the Jedi's dark blue eyes.

She knew Bastila also had another item of importance on her person; Katrina's lightsaber.

Knowing that her weapon would not be there if she reached for her belt made Katrina's fingers felt like curls of dry and peeling skin. They itched for it, longed for it, wanted to attack Bastila and rip it out of whatever secret pocket of her robes it was hiding in. But Bastila knew this and the Jedi's hands stayed poised above her double blade hanging from her own belt. Katrina exhaled brokenly.

One hand touched her, and it was her brother's. His palm rested on her shoulder, his thumb making small circles on the back of her neck. This was something else keeping her grounded; keeping Revan standing at the side of Carth's burning body instead of throwing herself onto it like Katrina Onasi wanted to do. Revan's legs were stiff and straight while Katrina's legs quivered and tensed, ready to run at the first opportune second.

_You think I'm weak_, she had thought towards him when he had arrived, her cheekbones twitching.

_I think you loved him_, Phineas had answered carefully. He had begun to bald in a straight arc back over his head, and despite being five years from sixty he looked lankier than ever.

She didn't like attaching 'had' to everything like it would never happen again, like loving Carth was just something she had done once.

He wasn't Force sensitive; had never been in any way. She had no way of calling to him. He had no way of answering. She had no way of knowing where he was or what fate awaited non-Force-users after their deaths.

Katrina idly imagined an afterlife for him; Carth Onasi, stumbling into some empty room in his orange jacket, scratching his head and looking slightly amused. In her head she painted his hair brown again, made the scars he had earned since Taris disappear.

The things she wanted to give him were still alive; the happiness and peace she wanted him to have were not attainable without all that he had left behind. She could think of only one thing that no one, not even her, had been able to give him in life.

She imagined him finding Morgana; she watched him wrap his arms around her and kiss her for longer than the living would have been able to go without breathing. Katrina couldn't help comparing herself to his first wife; a woman with long black hair and a dazzling smile. These images of the other Mrs. Onasi came to her from years of Carth and Dustil's memories; pieces of soft conversation on the _Hawk_ or the _Chaser_, the occasional slip-up in bed.

She watched the pair talk; she imagined Carth making Morgana laugh and blush and she felt inexplicably jealous of a dead woman; jealous of a dead woman and her dead husband, who had been the dead woman's husband first. Katrina waited as they saw how the other had fared without them, and she watched Carth hang his head in shame, trying to tell Morgana that he had fallen in love with her killer; with the murderer Revan, the monster Revan, the Sith Revan-

It was then that the tears rolled down her cheeks and into the back of her hand; lifted belatedly to try and hide them. She began to hyperventilate, and Celyn leaned against her, reaching for her other hand. Katrina let her daughter take it and kept the other in front of her, her hand pressed up against her mouth to muffle the short, panicked breaths.

She wanted her lightsaber. She wanted to hurt something. A lot of somethings.

More than that however; a fact that kept both Revan and Katrina Onasi from hurting anyone or anything, now or ever again:

More than that, she wanted Carth.


End file.
